This invention relates to an electrical connector including a plug connector and a receptacle connector adapted to be fitted with each other for connection between electronic appliances, and more particularly to an electrical connector including a plug connector having plug contacts formed on a flexible insulating plate to accommodate any positional variance of the contacts when being connected to a mating connector.
The applicant of the present application has already proposed an electrical connector whose plug connector is provided with flexible contacts, for example, comprising FPC substrates (flexible printing card substrates) to accommodate positional variance between connectors in Japanese Patent Application No. H8-204,267(1996). However, the proposed electrical connector suffers the following several disadvantages to be eliminated from the contacts comprising a plurality of substrates, for example, two substrates bonded to each other.
(1) The contact is uniformly thin from its contact portion to its tail portion for the purpose of giving the flexibility to the contact. Consequently, the tail portion of the contact is likely to deform when being connected to a board, with resulting unreliable connection.
(2) The operation for bonding the FPC substrates is rather troublesome.
(3) There is a risk of the bonded surfaces of the FPC substrates being separated with elapse of time by repeated connection of the connectors.
(4) It can be expected to accommodate positional variance or shifting of the contacts effectively with the aid of their flexibility in all but longitudinal direction of the substrates. However, positional variance or shifting of the contacts in the longitudinal direction of the substrates could not be effectively accommodated.
(5) As the metal contact layers on one side of the bonded flexible substrates are aligned with the metal contact layers on the other side, the spacing distances between these metal contact layers and the spacing distances between contacts of a receptacle connector (mating connector) adapted to contact the metal contact layers could not be large enough.
(6) Moreover, in such an application requiring repeated heating processes such as soldering for connecting to a board of an electronic appliance through terminals of worked metal pieces connected to the tail portions of the contacts, the soldering operation could not be satisfactorily effected. Therefore, the uses of the electrical connector are limited.
The applicant of the present application has proposed in a Japanese Patent Application filed on Jan. 8, 1997 an electrical connector provided with a guard spacer along upper longitudinal edges of two FPC substrates to prevent the separation of their bonded surfaces.